25): Bittersweet
by Order and Chaos - Qui Iudicant
Summary: Star Fox encounters not one but two foes when attacking the aparoid planet. The Formics, and the Xenocide.
1. Enemy Planet

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 _ **Enemy Planet**_

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 ** _Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted._**  
 _—Sun Tzu_

"Coordinates of aparoid system confirmed and stored in memory," intoned Robot Operating Buddy, Model Sixty-Four.

The _Great Fox_ moved in formation with the hundred odd strong Cornerian fleet grouped around in a huge semi-circular half dome. It was pathetic, made up of hastily repurposed civilian ships and various defense force remnants, escorted by less than four hundred fightcraft—some of which were ancient museum pieces and Venomian relics. Their assault was all or nothing—the aparoids would outnumber them at least a thousand to one, if not more, until Beltino's self-destruct program ended them.

Never before had Fox faced an enemy of this magnitude, not even the Saurian crisis had been this severe. The most he ever had to deal with were pirate attacks or shepherding spice-caravans, routine work for mercenaries out of the war business. Then the aparoids came. Seven months of constant fighting, of almost annihilation. Fortunately they managed to rally together before shock overwhelmed Corneria, and pushed back the insects—and now, thanks to the orbital gate's survival, the federation could strike at the brain of the aparoids.

"This is it?" Falco's dismissive question brought him back to reality. "I'd thought there'd be more of them."

"Don't tempt fate, Falco," Fox cautioned.

"So what? They're on their last legs—three or four, right? I can't tell."

"The planet… it's lovely. I… wasn't expecting that." The viewscreen had been put on to maximum magnification, and Fox saw what Krystal was talking about. The aparoid homeworld was a pretty picture, green and purple geometric designs indicating extensive canal or road networks covered the surface, with two or three blue splotches that looked to be bodies of water.

"Wait a minute, its size and mass are disproportionate," Peppy interjected. "Don't be fooled by that one side—planet is tidally locked, it's the dark side we must look at it."

"ROB, can you rotate the viewer?" Fox asked over Slippy's clueless "Wha—".

"Acknowledged, rotating planetary image by ninety degrees."

The planet face shifted as ROB manipulated the viewer, the dayside turning away—the filters darkened to shut out the sun's harmful rays—and bringing the night fully into view. Like the dayside it was covered with an extensive grid converging on one large spot at the equatorial line. There were no oceans to be seen, or clouds. For that matter, the planet looked to have absolutely no axial tilt at all.

Something wasn't right about this.

"Peppy, are you saying…"

"No doubt about that, Fox, the planet is seven times larger than Corneria but its mass is less than Macbeth's."

"It is hollow…?"

"Multiple aparoid signatures detected—ten, fifty, two hundred fifty, one thousand, unquantifiable—"

Fox slowly stood from his seat as a gigantic—literally opaque—purple mass started swarming out of the central crater of the homeworld. Soon the planet itself was obscured by an ever-shifting mass of ships, fighters and drones. _My god_ , he realized. _We've walked into a trap._

"Maybe we can use that hole to get to the queen—" Peppy didn't sound too hopeful, and Slippy's less energetic response, "I detected a shield going up very quickly, though," all but made Fox's spirits sink.

"It's all or nothing now, team," he said quickly, before they started panicking. "If we must die for Corneria, then so be it. Let it be known that—"

"Multiple unknown contacts detected," ROB interrupted. "Displaying now."

The viewscreen pulled back to its original resolution—the purple swarm had shrunk significantly but, Fox noted with dismay, was still quite large. The distant star around which the aparoid planet orbited showed as a glowing halo of yellow-orange, only just beginning to be blocked out as the aparoids closed in on them. The glow of two Cornerian frigates entered the field, their fighters deploying in anticipation of combat.

But none of those things was what really concerned him.

Floating silently before the Cornerian fleet, moving toward the swarm, was a small group of blue-grey ships. Twenty vessels, escorted by four fighter ships each, marked by points of light.

"Where did they come from?"

"In-bound vector parallels with projected Cornerian movements," ROB answered Falco. "Flight-path analysis indicates they were moving in position twenty-three point nine point seven hours prior to orbital gate energy transport. Distance, sixteen light seconds down and ahead of Cornerian fleet."

"Can you make contact with them?" Peppy asked, eagerly. "If we know who they are we could set up an alliance!"

"Alien fleet has no indication they are aware of our position."

Fox observed the foreigners with interest. They were of a design he had never seen before—blocky and rectangular, almost like Andross' ships. Were these perhaps remnants of Venomian forces, on their way at the whim of their mad emperor? When were they launched, and how long had they been traveling? "Krystal," he asked, "can you sense anything from them?"

When he got no answer Fox's ears pointed upwards and he turned around. "Krystal? Are you—Krystal!"

She was on the ground convulsing madly, looking as if she was in a seizure, her marionette strings snipped. Fox raced over to her, falling to his knees, and cradled her head. "Krystal, wake up!" he yelled. Her mouth lolled open and drool came out; her eyes, though closed, were frantic in their movements. "Slippy!" he shouted. "Get the medic kit!"

"I'm on it—I'm on it!"

"Peppy, you take command—"

"Roger, Fox—"

"Is there anything I—?"

"Shut up and stay where you are, Falco—Krystal, wake up, please!"

Through it all ROB stood placidly, staring at the viewscreen. He said to nobody in particular, "Alien fleet moving into unknown formation, preparing to attack aparoid forces."

Fox peeled back one of Krystal's eyelids and almost let go when he saw how fast her eye was moving. It seemed possessed, as if it had its own mind or had been injected with some sort of stimulant. Slippy ambled in holding a red-and-white packet that he was fumbling open. Fox yanked the hypospray almost instantly out of the toad's hand and pressed it to the vixen's neck.

Instantly the sedative took effect and she calmed down, her eyes freezing in place for a split second before rolling to the side. Her breathing, which was erratic, slowed to normal levels. Fox put an ear to her chest—he was relieved to hear her heartbeat slowing down. "What happened to her?" he asked ineffectually. No one could answer him.

For several agonizingly long minutes they waited—waited as the aparoid fleet closed in on them, waited as the Cornerian fleet started bombarding the Great Fox with requests for orders (" _Commander, the alien fleet is attacking, should we assist them, over?_ "), waited as Krystal fell into a deep sleep.

"Fox, what do you want me to do?" Peppy asked, covering the mouthpiece of his headset, which he'd put on lopsidedly in his haste to intercept the communications. Fox didn't answer, watching Krystal. Falco kept quiet but glanced nervously at the viewscreen. Slippy had the contents of the packet organized and ready for whatever Fox needed.

"Please, wake up," Fox whispered.

Finally, Krystal did wake—but her eyes did not indicate she saw them. They stared straight up. Then she spoke, chokingly, with emotion so unlike of her:

" _O my son Absalom. My son, my son Absalom. Would God I could die for thee, O Absalom, my son. My sons!_ "

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	2. The Room

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 ** _The Room_**

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 ** _Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win._**  
 _—Sun Tzu_

Her eyes opened and the _Great Fox_ had vanished. One moment she was there, observing the odd planet that was home to the aparoids, the next she was here in this strange place.

Krystal looked around, uncertain of where she was. It was a dark place, wide and cavernous, but somehow felt oppressive. There was a distinct wrongness to her senses, as if this had been scooped out of whatever material it was made from, reconverted. It was cold, like a dead hulk of a space ship, and her breath rose about like a thick cloud.

"Are you there?"

She jumped. "Y—Yes?" she squeaked.

Another voice answered her. "All of us. Kind of late for practice this morning, aren't you?"

"Sorry, I overslept," the first voice replied.

There was a smattering of laughter, half-hearted but also relieved. Then there was silence.

Krystal suddenly became aware of others in the room with her. Directly before her was the speaker who had spoken first, about her own height. It was dark, but that, she knew, was due to both the twilight of the room—why was it so dim?—and the dark bluish uniform the figure wore. It wasn't Cornerian—the shape of the head was wrong, for one thing. Too small to be a toad, too well-proportioned to be a bird or dog's head, with no visible ears like a cat or fox's except for some weird ridges and bulges running sideways over the top. It didn't seem to be aware of her, even though she was standing so close she could see the mistiness of her breath drifting about its head.

She looked around it—him, the sense came to her. There was a console of some kind before him, fitted with levers and buttons, but no displays. She checked herself. No, there was a display, but it was the most dull-looking display she'd ever seen—blue-green dots of light moved through a massive holograph cube that represented open space. There were other dots, yellow and orange, moving swiftly, but the blue-green overcame them with an ease that spoke of extensive experience. Fox had told her about simulators like this, except this person didn't look like he was controlling one ship. There was no information display whatsoever that showed vital statistics like fuel and bombs.

Was this person like her, who didn't need computers to tell him what he needed? Cautiously, she reached to touch his mind—and found it opaque to her. No, not opaque. No mind was truly closed off.

What most got wrong about her unique ability, including Star Fox themselves, was that they thought she could read one's mind as if it were an open book, instantly discern their motives and point out their thoughts. Anybody could do that, with enough practice, one just had learn how to read the other's expression and body language. No "mind-reading" required. What Krystal actually did was she could discern emotion before it was made visible to others. That was easier than reading thoughts, for with emotions came thoughts, and she could read intent through one's emotional makeup—though she had difficulty, as someone skilled in hiding or obscuring their emotions would throw her off completely. It was like watching a pattern of lines on a screen that fluctuated and changed as sound was played, that was what a mind looked like to her, carefully smooth or ridged lines wrapped around a rough spheroid, which she knew was an abstract representation of a physical brain.

Like sounds, each brain—each mind—had its own "wavelength", its own frequency. Some she knew intimately—Fox's, for example. Star Fox, even Star Wolf, their patterns instantly recognizable to her. Others were different, like the average Cornerian soldier's. And then there were the aparoids, which were on another track entirely, for while she could sense them it was like trying to "hear" or remember a distant memory of some unpleasant sound she had blocked out. In numbers and up close it was hard to close them out, like hearing an orchestra of badly tuned instruments of no great quality and led by nobody in particular, and she had to shield herself thickly to stay sane.

Here, there was none of that. For the first time in months she met a mind so alike to her own and yet so different. This one was laser-focused— _I must win_ —but there was extreme weariness shading it, almost smothering in intensity.

It was also extremely young.

Krystal broke contact in surprise. This was a child?

There was murmuring behind her, and she thought it was the other speaker, who had sounded much different but similar, and turned around. About four or five meters away, watching with solemn alertness, were a group of men, all taller than her. Unlike the person she had just looked into—and _he_ was aware of them only distantly—these felt extremely old. They thought slower, just slightly, but it was enough to dissuade her efforts. What she could gather from them leaked from behind the rigid shielding that bespoke of military training. And it left her open mouthed.

They were not Cornerian—this much was clear. But the differences were just cosmetic and slight, for they could have been genetic cousins. No, the main difference was each man was over two centuries old, some three centuries. The youngster, for instance, was ten years older than _Peppy_ yet he was barely considered adolescent by these people's standards. That explained both the slowness of thought and the similar-yet-dissimilar mind patterns.

What was more, and no less surprising, was that they had been fighting a war against the aparoids for a century of their own reckoning; but by Corneria's, it may as well have been eternal. Those seven "months" Corneria spent pushing back the aparoids could have been a skirmish, as laughable as the maneuvers the boy—old enough to be her grandfather—was doing.

What did the aparoids do to cause such a long war? Were they the aggressors? Were they on the defensive? These questions troubled Krystal. Was the entire war against Corneria an offshoot of the main conflict? Who were these people and why did they train their _children_ to fight wars—were they as militarized as the SharpClaw, only to the nth degree? She couldn't sense anything outside of this room except other minds like the boy's, all single-mindedly focused.

Moreover—how did she end up here? Krystal looked down at her hands. They were blue and white, gloved by her jumpsuit. She pinched one, and the pain shot through her like cold water quenches thirst.

There was a commotion. She looked at the men again. Someone had come up and was whispering into one's ear. Krystal strayed over to them, wanting answers. Somehow, she could hear them.

"Colonel," the person—a century and a half—was saying, eyes focused on the boy. "Something came through the Philotic contact with the fleet."

"Is it dangerous?"

"We are not sure. We've traced it to this room, tethered here by the ansible. Scans can find nothing and thermals don't show it."

"Is this cause for concern?" The officer was dismissive.

"I'm afraid so. In addition to this presence, comscan has detected another fleet a few seconds from ours which coincided with that burst of anomalous energy just before transmission. They aren't sure whether to inform the sim."

"Why are you telling me this and not Rackham?"

"Sir, the boy is under a lot of stress—"

"He is no longer under my command, Major, and this won't change. Go bother Rackham with it."

"Yes, sir."

Krystal came up to the one addressed as Colonel as the Major departed. She felt small, both physically and mentally, and looked into the craggy lines and swarthy features of his face. "What are you," she asked, unheard. "What are you to do this to a child?"

"They were desperate."

She whirled around. Behind the boy, a hand caressing his dark head, was a tall woman, glowing and angelic. She had folded wings that were insectoid, like the vast wings of a butterfly, colored gold and light green and blue; her raiment was silvery, dresslike and diaphanous. She was looking at Krystal, and her eyes were pupiless. No, not pupiless—compound. Antennae poked out of her aquamarine-colored hair, which flowed thickly upon her back and between her wings.

Krystal immediately crouched into a fighting stance. "Get away from him, aparoid," she hissed. She reached out to touch the other's mind, and found it reminiscent of the aparoid orchestra of chaos, only… only more organized. Like she were a conductor, directing music. There was no music being played.

The aparoid considered the boy, ruffling his hair (her fingers passed through without touching), then turned from him. "I cannot hurt him any more than you can," she answered.

"Then why are you here?"

"Why are _you_ here?"

Krystal couldn't answer that.

"Krystal of Star Fox, please stay your aggression," the woman said gently. "I come in peace."

"I won't fall for that."

"I understand." She turned away, her antennae dropping, and watched the holographic screen before them. It had changed—there was an orb at its far end, filling nearly half the screen, blocked and obscured by a vast orange mass of light. Many thousands of thousands of dots of lights, ever-shifting, ever-changing. Floating before them were twenty blue-green dots, each with four tinier ones in escort.

The boy was frozen. Krystal could tell that much from where she was. There was a curse from one of the gathered men, and one muttered, "This is insanity."

"Get away from him," she ordered, moving toward the aparoid, ready to pounce. The insect woman did not answer but stood quietly. Krystal crept closer—then, with a yell, leapt for her.

Her yell turned into a squawk of pain as she fell forward, hitting her head against the boy's console. Nothing changed in the field, so she was in some measure incorporeal. Krystal stood, rubbing her head, and turned to look at the woman, who smiled sadly at her. "Why can't I touch you?" she asked stupidly.

"We are phantasms, Philotic projections drawn through the hyperspatial link between here and there."

"Philotic?"

"Something you couldn't understand."

Krystal was annoyed. "Look here, lady, don't talk down—"

"A century ago neither did these," and she gestured around the room, indicating the men and the boy, and the invisible presences elsewhere. "And they have mastered it. You will too, in time, eventually."

"Who are you?"

"I am the queen of the aparoid species, the mother of my daughters." Her eyes drifted down to the boy. "And their mourner."

"Y—You?" Krystal was speechless. "Bu—But, I thought you—you were hideous an—and ugly—!"

"Yes, I suppose I am. We are different kinds of being. Here, I choose to shape my form. It gives me some comfort to know the one who will destroy me."

"Destroy you?"

"Yes."

Krystal turned, looking from the boy—who was still staring at the impossible task before him—to the queen, who looked indeed every bit the regal stateswoman. "How?"

"For the past year, nearly five of your own, I have been fighting the battle for my life. These single-minded queenless beings like you came with vengeance in their hearts. They fought with unmitigated foreocity. I could not defeat them. They are capable of fighting like aparoids but also as if each were a queen. Deadly, unstoppable. This boy is the high queen of the queens."

"Queens?"

"I am a queen. My daughters are queens. But we are few. You are a queen, your mate is a queen. Your army is made up of queens. You can make your own decisions, you can react because you are not mindless. These people are queens, and they have mastered what we and you cannot. Fuse the queendom into a hive."

"I don't understand."

"What you call _individuality_ ," the woman answered. Krystal then understood. It was impossible not to.

Almost as if he had the same revelation the boy laughed, his trance broken, started to whisper into a microphone which Krystal saw for the first time was connected to a headset which sat on his head, which explained why he looked so odd. The points of light that represented his fleet (with no sign of Corneria anywhere) started moving. Instead of pulling into an attack formation they instead began clustering together, rings within rings, layer upon layer, creating a thick cylindrical projectile. Then they moved toward the mass of aparoids.

"So you're here to torment him, is that it? Watching over his shoulder so you know his plan?" Krystal asked. "I'm warning you, Corneria is there, and is larger than his fleet. If you do anything we will move to help him, and you can't account for both of us."

"Krystal of Star Fox, there is a difference between observing and acting upon that observation. I do not know what goes on in his head, nor the heads of his subordinate queens. He knows me thoroughly. There is nothing I can do that can stop him. Your fleet can do little better."

"Then why did you say they are desperate? It doesn't _look_ like they are."

"Krystal of Star Fox, I am not speaking of the pupae but the mature adults. Nearly six hundred years of your time past, they were a single system, divided and squabbling over resources like thoughtless animals. Then I came. I intended to set up a home for my youngest daughter. But somehow they defeated her. At this point I knew I had made a terrible mistake and retreated, hoping they would not come. But they did, using our tools against us.

"Imagine this, Krystal of Star Fox, of a small world, imagine: you and your world, alone in the universe. You know of no one else but you and your neighbor. Then you discover another species out there on one of the worlds you want. You think of them as animals, for they are animals. But these animals push you away and humiliate you, taking your ships and your thoughts for their own. At once, you are filled with shame and try to make amends, to be reconciled, but you cannot speak to them for neither they nor you can understand the other. That "aparoidation" your Slippy of Star Fox speaks of is an innovation of ours, whereby we could communicate with your people and convince them we are not their foes. But it is too late. You are bent on our annihilation, and we can do nothing to stop it."

"Hold on—you are saying your invasion was you trying to _talk_ to us?" Krystal was speechless. "I don't believe it!"

"What else can I say? You won't accept any apology should I offer it. And now you have found your way to our world, a dying world filled with the clustered billions of my children, armed and armored with ten thousand useless ships, like sheep before the slaughter."

"Yet you outnumber Corneria."

"Yes—Corneria can be beaten, because you are hasty. But we are tired and do not wish to fight."

Krystal glanced at the hologram, where the orange mass had swallowed the blue-green like a cell would food. "Could have fooled me."

"If you must be cynical, at least spare the feelings of a woman on her deathbed. It is all I ask, Krystal of Star Fox."

"Queenie—right? Look, I don't know what your goal is here but your high-minded speech isn't going to work. You are going to die, and that'll be the end of it, even if we fail in the attempt. You stole the souls of billions to bypass evolution!" The queen was shaking her head, saying " _no, no_ ", but Krystal pressed on. "And now you are getting your just reward, if not from us then from these people."

The aparoid was silent. "Then so be it," she then answered. She knelt on the floor so she was level with the boy, who had bent himself fully into the holographic simulation. It had changed—the greater mass of aparoid ships had been left behind and the planet loomed larger, nearly four-fifths of itself dominating the sim. The blue-green ships—no longer single dots but a solid bar of light—arrowed toward it, bypassing smaller aparoid clusters that sought to close it off.

"Oh my son, Absalom," the queen whispered. "My son, my son Absalom. Would God I could die for thee, oh Absalom, my son, my sons."

Krystal drew near. Somehow she felt pity for the queen instead of despising her.

"During my time with this boy," the queen said, "I devoted myself to learning about them, but most of all to understand my executioner. In that time I came across a King, who like myself had everything, was above all. Then tragedy struck him and his family. Krystal of Star Fox, this man almost overthrown by his own dear boy, who hated him, enough to murder him. He was rebellious, but ignorant of his King and God's decrees—and yet the King loved him in spite of it. In that time, I have come to see this boy—" she waved a hand to him, "—as my own flesh and blood, as if he were one of my daughters, as if he were my Absalom. And it hurts me deeply. If I could spare him of the pain he has suffered these long nights past, I would do so, but I cannot without giving up life. If I could spare my daughters, all nine billion of them, I would but I—I…"

She breathed in, sorrow heavy on her shoulders. Krystal knelt beside her.

"This is my sin, to be stripped of ignorance and filled with shame. I have killed a sister instead of a pest, and her daughters come for payment. For this there is no redemption but death. He is my Judas—yet, my Christ."

"I don't understand."

"You will, Krystal of Star Fox, you will. One day you will meet them. Do not make the same mistakes as I have done. Remember me, for my people's sake, for your people's sake, for this people's sake." She reached out and caught Krystal's hand. It felt warm and full of vigor, though it was a phantasm and an image of a real flesh-and-blood being many thousands of light years away, separated by Philotes.

"Please."

Krystal couldn't look at her. The sorrow in the queen's eyes was too much to bear.

She looked around and found the simulator. The boy commanded, oblivious to their presence, leaning in; his hands were off the controls. The aparoids were few now, stragglers—the perspective had changed, for they were looking down on the planet from the viewpoint of the boy's ships. They were falling down, separating as they were pulled by gravity, aiming their incomprehensible weaponry for one target only. What would Star Fox and Corneria think of this? This was suicide. Or could they even see them? Were they fighting with the aparoid fleets left behind? Or were they still watching, paralysed and uncertain of what to do?

Suddenly the planet's surface undulated. Disturbances like ripples in water spread across it, rapidly fading as it erupted outward in a vast geyser of flame and molten rock. The inferno consumed the boy's ships, the last of which pulled away. Before Krystal's very eyes the planet exploded in a fireball of atomised dust and death, chasing after the last of its destroyers. Aparoid ships were consumed, doing nothing to evade it.

But that was only the epilogue. The aparoids were dead. She looked back. The queen was no longer there. The queen was dead.

The room faded away and disappeared into the aether, and she too vanished.

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	3. Game Over

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 ** _Game Over_**

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 _ **The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.**_  
 _—Sun Tzu_

Krysta's eyes snapped open and she sat up straight in an instant.

"Krystal!"

She turned to see Fox plunking his chair forward as he stood. He looked concerned. "Hello, Fox," she said faintly, disturbed still by what she had seen.

"I'm glad you are awake. When you collapsed we had to move you to a bed after trying to revive you—"

"Fox, thank you… but let me think."

"Sure thing." Fox took a seat at the foot of the bed, which she recognized was in her quarters. Apparently it was the closest to the bridge to dump her. She smiled ruefully. What was that anyway, collapsing with no control over herself. _Philotic connection… couldn't understand…_

"I remember…"

"Remember what?"

"Nevermind about that—the battle, did we win it?"

Fox looked amused. "Pride would tell me, yes, we did, but the alien fleet took care of it for us."

"Alien… fleet?"

His smile stretched further. "So you really don't remember what happened? Tell me, what do you remember?"

"Slippy said something about a shield, then ROB said something about contacts," Krystal answered slowly, trying to sort her fragmented memory. "I felt lightheaded… and then I was somewhere else."

"Well, those contacts was that fleet. I was going to ask if you could telepathically—"

"Fox, I've told you a hundred times, but that's not how it works."

"—and then I found you seizing up on the floor, I turned command over to Peppy, carried you here, and returned to find the aparoids being obliterated by a supernova. Those ships had some pretty powerful weapons."

Krystal nodded slowly. It was coming back to her—the dark room, the white woman, the solemn men, the boy commander—but the details escaped her still. "I suppose we ought to be grateful to them," she said.

"Heh heh, yeah, you might say that." Fox looked down, wringing his hands all of a sudden.

"What happened?"

"I didn't know what to expect, so I radioed the Cornerian commander and General Pepper back in the orbital gate, and asked them what to do. I offered my theories and they gave me some orders to make contact."

She looked at him with narrowed eyes. Something about his tone of voice didn't sound right; Fox averted his eyes from her and looked anywhere but near her. "What happened?" she repeated. "What were those theories?"

"I—I thought they were Venomian. The design was consistent with Andross' fleet schematics, and I cautioned Pepper that they might be a danger." He chuckled nervously. "I mean, they did blow up a planet after all, who wouldn't be worried, am I right?" She glared at him and he quickly broke down. "All right, that's not what happened."

"Tell me," she demanded. More fragments were coming back, of a woman pleading with her—the aparoid queen herself—pleading to be remembered. Sorrowfully imparting her the warning to never repeat her mistakes.

"Pepper went berserk. He ordered us to give no quarter to them. We outnumbered them, so it was easy to take out the three or four transports remaining. They had spent all of their fighters in that suicide run…"

 _Oh no._

Krystal put her head in her hands, feeling the onset of an immense headache. It had to be the psychic backlash of the aparoids' extermination, but she suspected it had to do with that bizarre transport. She massaged her temples, willing her body to behave. Krystal suddenly flinched, and Fox withdrew his hand. "Is something wrong, dear?" he ventured.

"Fox—" she said through gritted teeth, her headache starting to overwhelm her despite her efforts. "You are the worst goddamn idiot I've ever had the misfortune to meet. You should have kept your mouth shut."

"How was I to know Pepper—?"

"Fuck the man, and fuck you too!" she screamed, almost launching herself at him. "I wasn't knocked out cold, I went somewhere and it was right in the alien commanders' war room! That fleet you destroyed is just one of a hundred others, and that people, oh let me tell you how much of a fucking mess you've created for us—they train their children for war, and we have set a target on our heads because of your stupidity!"

"But—"

"Do you know why the aparoids were exterminated?"

"I—"

"You don't, and you don't care so let me tell you. The aparoids attacked this people just as they did us, only to be defeated twofold! The aparoids didn't know what they had done and tried too late to stop it. For hundreds of years the aparoids have been fighting them—yes, I said centuries, a single member of their race lives four times our lifetime. They were losing. The aparoids were _losing_ , do you understand that?"

"Krystal—"

"For fuck's sake they tried to reach out for help! They turned to us! They tried to make contact, that aparoidation was their way of trying to communicate, and we took it the wrong way because they didn't know how it worked. They didn't know we'd be just as vindictive and ruthless! All of those aparoid fleets we fought was just a group of pathetic refugees fleeing their doom. We cornered them in their homeworld! We—Cornerians!—we trapped them there as lambs for the slaughter!"

"Bu—"

" _And now you have attacked their destroyer who will find us and blast us to oblivion in retaliation! Do you know what you just fucking did, James Fox McCloud? You just dug our fucking gra—!_ "

She never got to finish her screams. Fox suddenly stood up and grabbed a hypospray. Before she could stop him he pressed it to her neck and she was out like a light, flopping helplessly back against the pillows. For a moment he stood there, half numb, half furious. Then he threw the hypospray. It cracked against the wall, inoperable and useless, and stalked out of the room.

Falco was waiting outside, his face set in an uncharacteristically grim smile. "That went well," he offered.

"That's putting it mildly. While we still can, let's get the fleet back to Corneria." Fox brushed past him. "And, by the way, wipe ROB's memory. I'm going to see if I can't get Slippy to do some surreptitious hacking when we get home."

"Fox, stop using big words."

"I don't care, Falco, I screwed up big time. I can only hope it doesn't come back to bite me."

"You really think that rant is true? That could been a delusion foisted upon her by the queen, and those really were Venomian ships."

"I don't know. But let's get out of here and forget about this place. If those boogeyman are out there they won't find us, not if I can help it."

"Right away, boss."

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

"You made the hard choice, boy," Mazer Rackham said. "All or nothing. End them or end us. But heaven knows there was no other way you could have done it. Congratulations. You beat them, and it's all over."

"I beat _you_." The boy seemed to not understand what he had just accomplished.

Mazer laughed. "Ender, you never played _me_. You never played a _game_ since I became your enemy." When the boy started to get angry, and shrugged off his hand, Mazer let his mirth fade. "Ender, for the past few months you have been the battle commander of our fleets. This was the Third Invasion, there were no games, the battles were real, and the only enemy you fought was the buggers."

The boy stared.

"You won every battle," Mazer continued, "and today you finally fought them at their home world, where the queen was, all the queens from all their colonies, they all were there and you destroyed them completely. They'll never attack us again. You did it. You." He reached out again and clasped the boy's shoulder. At last some life sparked into his eyes, but it was resigned weariness, as if everything was catching up to him now that the confused euphoria of victory was wearing off.

Mazer let his hand drop as the boy moved past him—past all of the congratulations of the officers and Eros personnel—and disappeared into the corridor. Mazer knew that the burden of the harshness of war, so long blunted and shifted through the artificial simulated reality, was descending fully upon Ender's shoulders, mixing and combining with the mental strain already plaguing his mind. Sleep was what he wanted, and that was all anybody could begrudge him.

The Colonel came up to him. "You should have waited, Rackham."

"I know, Graff. In the moment of victory, there was nothing else to be done. But the boy requested that they be here."

"And now he is irrevocably damaged—he's got too much of his sister in him. We can't use him any more."

Mazer looked at him sharply. "What was that?" he asked, low enough so that no one else to hear.

"The simulation ended when the planet was destroyed, but our technicians were still in contact with the remainder of the fleet there."

"And?"

"Something attacked them. It wasn't the buggers."

Mazer thought long and hard. Then he said: "We are not in the same position we were in a century ago. We now have all the bugger worlds. If there's an enemy out there, we can survive them."

"Listen, Mazer, you weren't there. Anderson told me that there was this burst of energy moments before we engaged the buggers, a hyperspatial burst. There was an alien presence there. They counted the ships—over a hundred, and many larger and more versatile than the ships sent there. What was more, something came through the ansible link, right here to this very room. It stayed until the buggers were destroyed. I'm telling you, Mazer, we have a new enemy."

"And Ender, our greatest soldier, is too exhausted to care."

"Him, maybe. But there is another."

"The dwarf? But you told me—"

"Forgot what I told you," Graff continued. "We have Bean. He is destined for greatness, if Peter keeps his hands off him. If whatever is out there decides we are too dangerous to be left alive, they will come. They can appear in any of our worlds without our knowing, instantly. They waited until we ended the buggers to destroy those ships. Those were your brothers and sisters, Mazer. We have got to make the first strike."

"All right, Hyrum." Mazer felt heavy of heart and a desire for sleep. "Begin briefing the dwarf. Do we know where the aliens came from?"

"Yes."

"God help us all."

Both men turned and left the simulator room.

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

A/N: The chapter titles are soundtracks for the _Ender's Game_ movie, except for the second one, which is not a Jablonsky track but a Michael Warren, and unofficial, track. They are supposed to thematically fit the story. _Ender Quits_ would have been the third chapter title, as I think it has the proper melancholic feel, but _Game Over_ is more suitable.

The timeline discrepancy is through a difference in time perception; I applied actual "fox" years to the Cornerians, using estimates of the Enderverse timeline to make the calculation.


End file.
